


Ghost

by Tea Dragon (TheAccidentalNinja)



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Gen, POV Original Character, POV Outsider, POV Second Person, Recovered Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:49:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26127535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAccidentalNinja/pseuds/Tea%20Dragon
Summary: You've met him a few times; this odd fellow who is rumoured to be the Hylian Champion, returned from a hundred years ago to fight the Calamity once more. You sometimes wonder if he is a ghost.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 56





	Ghost

You met him a few times during your travels. Three, to be precise—once at the foot of the Great Plateau, once at the stables in Akkala, once alarmingly near Hyrule Castle. Odd places to be, but then again he was an odd fellow, as you discovered when he accompanied your group for a while on the road each time you met him.

He was silent, for the most part. In part because it seemed to be in his nature, in part because it seemed he did not want to say the wrong thing. When you first met him, one of the men —a mercenary hired by the merchants in your travel party—had asked him where he was from. “Castle Town right near the Cathedral”, he had replied without missing a beat. A confused silence followed, as people stared at him, and he looked the most confused out of everyone. He apologized then, saying that he didn’t know why he had said that, that he had just woken up a while back on the Plateau with no memories. An even stranger answer than the first, but at least it made more sense. Nobody could possibly come from Castle Town, unless they were a ghost. It was then that you began to wonder. And after that, he mostly kept silent.

The second time he accompanied your group, you had begun to hear the rumours. Rumours that the Hylian Champion, who fought with the Princess Zelda one hundred years ago, was somehow still alive, and had returned to fight the Calamity once more. Most didn’t believe these whispers. But you were a scholar, a student of times bygone. You knew things. Knew that there was a mysterious shrine hidden in the Plateau that was said to cure even the worst of injuries. Knew that nobody wore tunics nowadays like the one that he wore. Knew that nobody spoke nowadays like he did—he spoke seldom, but when he did, he did not sound like any traveller, or villager, or stableman that you had ever met. No, he spoke like the old books, like the old songs; he spoke like your great grandfather, who had survived the fall of Hyrule Castle, had lived to a very old age, and had sat you on his knee and told you countless stories of the old days before the Great Calamity. Before everything had been lost.

The mercenary in your group, having heard the rumours just like everyone else, asked him once if he was the Champion. It was an ill-meaning joke, but he paused, then said yes. Many in your group laughed at this, and jeered, and teased him more. He just shrugged, smiled sadly, and set to polishing his sword with scratched, calloused hands.

He was mostly silent, but you preferred his company to the rest of your travel group. And if you didn’t pressure him too much, if you knew the right questions to ask, he would smile softly, and gently. Especially if the topic involved food, as you found out. The rest of your party didn’t take notice, and often called him crazy. He certainly didn’t seem like a crazy person, and you had met a few. You often wondered if he was a ghost. He didn’t seem like that either; he ate and slept and sweated and bled just like any other person. But still, you wondered.

He talked when talked to, conversed when included in a conversation, but he guarded his words. He rarely met anyone’s gaze, either, and something always seemed off about him. Not crazy. Just… off. He never seemed to be quite _there_ , as if wherever he looked, he wasn’t really seeing what was in front of him, as if wherever he was, he was always partly somewhere else. You asked him once, where he was when he was not all the way here. He met your eyes then. He paused, and said, quietly, “I don’t know”. And you believed him. And you felt just as sad as he looked in that moment.

You met him a fourth time at the Dueling Peaks stable, on the way to Fort Hateno. You were going there to study the fort, and meet with the scholar who frequented there. You asked him where he was going, and he said he had been told to find something near the Fort grounds. A vague answer, as usual.

Your group slowed down once you reached the Plain. It was always an eerie sight—a scarred wasteland full of crumbled Guardians who had been all destroyed at once, supposedly, by the Princess Zelda, who fought the Calamity inside Hyrule Castle even now. The Guardians here were old and silent and dead, but still, you could never shake the fear, the uneasiness, the tremor down your spine. As interested in Guardians as you were, you knew to fear them. And you felt admiration, reverence perhaps, for the Princess who could destroy so many with just a single blast.

Leaving the rest of your group to dispose of the few monsters that crawled the plains, you followed him through the wreck of Guardians a ways off the road. If he disliked your company, he did not say so. So you assumed it was fine. 

He stopped then, abruptly, and stared down at the Plain and the Fort with the gaze of someone who was not seeing the present. He reached out his hand, grasping at something, closing his fingers around a thing that was not there. He stood still after that, staring at the landscape but seeing nothing, standing in front of you but not actually there.

Seconds passed. Many seconds. Minutes even. You grew concerned. You thought of moving him, trying to wake him, but something held you back. A part of you wondered if he would disappear if you touched him, if he might not actually be there after all.

Then he stumbled. You caught him—he was in fact here—and as his feet steadied, he continued to stare at the plains around him. You wanted to ask, but didn’t. You only watched, as he stared, as he seemed like he was trying to find words for something that he couldn’t quite grasp.

“I…died here.”

He said it quietly, so quietly that you weren’t sure you heard him, but knew you had. He looked like he had seen a ghost, and that ghost was himself.

The rest of your group called you back, and the two of you made your way back to the path and towards the Fort. You watched him all the while—as he looked back at the place where you both had stood, looked around at the Plain, the Fort, your travel group, at his hands, then back at the Plain again. Watched him turn to stare at Hyrule Castle, far off in the distance.

You had often wondered if he was a ghost.

You realize now that he wondered the same thing. 

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fic I've ever posted on here, I'm still not quite sure how the tags work yet...   
> Anyway, thanks for reading!


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